diversity

          As Eli Clare describes in Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, queer identity has been treated as madness, and queer people have been pathogized and condescended to for centuries:

“[q]ueer identity has been pathologized and medicalized. Until 1973, homosexuality wasconsidered a psychiatric disorder. Today transsexuality and transgenderism, under the names of gender dysphoria and gender identity disorder, are classified as psychiatric conditions. Queerness is all too frequently intertwined with shame, silence, and isolation…[q]ueer people deal with gawking all the time: when we hold hands in public, defy gender boundaries and norms, insist on recognition for our relationships and families…Queer people have been told for centuries by church, state, and science that our bodies are abnormal” (Clare 2009:112-113).

                                 Claiming the Stare: Jes Sachse and the Transformative Potential of Seeing

  We all love to look. While staring is most commonly thought of as an act to be avoided or ashamed of, Disability and Women’s Studies Scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that the stare at its best actually has the potential to create new meanings and more open societies.  The stare as Thomson defines it, has the potential to help us redefine the language we use to describe each other and ourselves, create space for the often-excluded in communities, and craft our own identities. The stare is most dynamic and productive when the subject of the stare, the staree, is able to wield some control over the interaction and in doing so present their story to the starer.

 A collaborative project on analyzing and exploring what is learning on Serendip?

Aybala50 & I worked on this project using GoogleDocs which enabled us to edit our project simultaneously, together or apart. This format shows our progression through discovering our own interpretations of learning.

Attached is a pdf of our final project.

Coral A. Walker

April 15, 2011

Evolit

Webpaper #3

Evolution of Genres in Latin American Literature:

The Birth of the Testimonio (Testimonial Narrative)